Friday, 19 August 2011

The NDP is accusing federal Conservative cabinet minister Tony Clement of using a controversial, $50-million G8 legacy fund to buy re-election, prompting a heated denial from the government.

Municipal documents obtained by the New Democrats show Clement met with local mayors and councillors in the midst of the 2008 election campaign. They discussed how to identify projects that could be eligible for the legacy funding.

Twelve days after that meeting, a local news outlet reported that Clement had posted video endorsements from "local townspeople, mayors and council members" on his campaign website.

Somebody needs to investigate. In particular, this bit:

The auditor general has also criticized the government for shutting bureaucrats out of the process and for maintaining no paper trail to explain how or why the projects were selected.

However, hundreds of pages of municipal documents obtained by the NDP through provincial freedom of information legislation, show that federal bureaucrats did in fact participate in local meetings about the legacy fund -- including the one held during the 2008 campaign.

The documents also show that municipal officials were told to direct all questions and send funding applications to Clement's constituency office, not the government.

Shame on the people of Muskoka who sold their vote for a bunch of crappers. But the bureaucrats who sold their integrity should be fired and prosecuted.

As for Tony Slush, I'll keep my opinions on his just punishment to myself.

3 comments:

Freaking crooks and liars. And when are we ever going to hear a decision on the "in and out" election funding scandal? Or for that matter, who is investigating those misleading robocalls during the last election?

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" It's still quoted because it still warns about the price of blind trust. For those uninterested in Latin -- "Fox-Henhouse". The sitting government of Canada has deliberately dismissed and muzzled its traditional in-house watchers.

Cue the deeply annoying "they're all the same" whingeing excuse as to why no one should vote differently or vote at all.

Politicians are simply people hired into public areas of guardianship. They are not They, they are Us.

Does that mean anyone using the 'give up now, it saves time' whine is outing themselves as corrupt and would exploit, cheat and lie to their fellow people every possible opportunity?

Or do we, the population of a nation state, deliberately only choose public guardians from the ranks of Not-Us somehow, expecting and *accepting* we are nothing more than *their* personal wealth resource and we should just tug our forelocks and die in the freezing dark for the Chosen ones.

Ms Fern has womanned the barricades at the Hudak level of watching, impolite little peon that she is. I wonder if the federal NDP will have anywhere near the same shit disturbing ability.

Elections Canada is investigating the robocalls that posed as official Elections Canada communications.

Elections Canada is NOT investigating the other vote-suppressing calls where the caller identified themselves as calling for the Liberal party, even using recordings of the Liberal candidate's voice, and called repeatedly at extremely late hours of the night. Some of these calls even appeared to come from the U.S. (though the company identified by the phone # said it wasn't them).

EC said "nothing in the Act prohibits or regulates the use of telephone solicitation seeking support for a particular candidate or party, nor does anything regulate the content of such calls... Consequently, no issue of compliance or enforcement arises from calls whose source is identified." I'm not sure if they purposely misunderstood the complaint, or if they really mean it's okay for a caller to lie about their identity, as long as *some* identification is made.

There's also reports of calls by the Conservatives mere days before the vote, where they'd lie about the local Liberal candidate. One former Liberal MP, for example, during his regular winter holiday, spent his own time and money to volunteer in Africa. The callers said/strongly implied he flew to sunny tropical resort destinations on government time and taxpayers' money rather than be a responsible MP. Elections Canada isn't investigating these either. (Possibly technically rightly, but it's still a very scumbag tactic to pull)

Who knows what the RCMP is investigating and what investigations they might declare "unwarranted" and refuse further comment.

Of course, nothing ever happened after the 2008 election's 'case of the mysterious NDP fax number'. The NDP candidate had dropped out of the race earlier, but late enough for his name to remain on the ballot. Mere days before the vote, residents of the riding were asked to vote for the NDP candidate by a fraudulent robocall claiming to be from the NDP with the NDP name and number on caller-id.

The NDP never made such calls, and the number was for their fax machine. The spoiled votes for the NDP would have been enough to elect the Liberal MP and defeat Con Gary Lunn. Thankfully Elizabeth May kicked him out in 2011.

If the RCMP & EC couldn't or wouldn't track down what happened in a single, clear instance in 2008, are they going to do what's right for the full court press in 2011? Very doubtful.